The present invention relates to an apparatus for directing air against a surface to dislodge material thereon. More particularly, the present invention relates to a blower or fan assembly for mounting on the ceiling of a textile processing area for dislodging dust, lint and other textile by-products that have accumulated on such ceilings over time.
The ceilings of textile work processing rooms often become the resting place of lint, dust and other generally lighter than air by-products created during textile processing. The accumulation of these by-products tends to encourage the further accumulation of by-products thereon, and becomes detrimental to the working environment for the textile processing machines. By far the greatest harm of such by-product accumulation, however, is the creation of a harmful environment for the textile workers who are beset by various respiratory ailments aggravated by the presence of minute airborne lint and other textile by-products.
Accordingly, several types of apparatus have been proposed to deal with these by-product accumulations and one type thereof operates to dislodge such textile by-products from the ceiling and thereby set these by-products with the surrounding air into circulation to eventually be removed by conventional lint-removal devices, such as special filters and the like positioned adjacent the textile processing machines. For example, a universally mounted ceiling cleaner disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,072,321 to King, Jr., includes a high velocity fan and its motor mounted in a fan casing having horizontal trunnions which are mounted in the lower ends of an inverted U-shaped yoke. The fan and its motor oscillate through a vertical swing path relative to the U-shaped yoke. The yoke is rotatably mounted on a hollow vertical shaft which is fixed to the ceiling of a textile processing room. A gear motor unit mounted on the U-shaped yoke drives both the rotation of the yoke and the oscillating motion of the fan and its motor.
However, the ceiling cleaner disclosed in the King, Jr. patent suffers from a number of disadvantages. For example, both the rotational movement the U-shaped yoke and the simultaneous oscillating motion of the fan's motor are ultimately transmitted to the assembly which mounts the ceiling cleaner to the ceiling, thereby subjecting the assembly mounting means to the type of relatively significant torsional forces which occur when a moving object of relatively significant mass, such as the oscillating fan motor, is mounted at a distance from the support means. Additionally, the gear motor must be of sufficient size to rotate the U-shaped yoke with the moving fan and motor supporter thereon as well as to drive the oscillation of the fan and its motor with respect to the yoke and the mass of the gear motor contributes to the strain on the assembly mounting means.